Wasteland 2 Beta is now available on Steam and it’s pretty great

Totally worth it.

What did you do on the weekend folks? If you’re anything like the people on my Steam friends list, you played one of two games – Starbound or the Wasteland 2 beta. For cool people with handsome haircuts like me who backed Wasteland 2 at a high enough level, inXile handed out the beta on Thursday, and on Saturday they followed this up by making it available to everyone, on Steam Early Access.

To begin playing the beta you will need to hand over $59.99 – a high price, but a necessary one – Kickstarter backers needed to pay at least $55 to gain access to the beta – the full release will cost less. Buying the beta on Early Access will also get you a copy of the original Wasteland – redesigned to work with modern systems – two digital novellas, an art book and the excellent Wasteland 2 soundtrack.

If you’re looking for some old school RPGin’, it’s definitely worth checking out – as Fargo notes in a post regarding the beta (which you should definitely read if you want to play the beta) the beta is more linear than the final game will be, but there is still plenty of content. You can grab Wasteland 2 from Steam and you can watch the beta launch trailer embedded below.

Much more polished then I envisioned and quite a bit of content for a Beta, pretty damn impressed with what I’ve seen so far and right up there for my most anticipated 2014 title.

Shame about the uninformed masses who can’t comprehend the reasoning for the price being fair for us backers making such a ruckus and generally giving off such an immature negative vibe over on the forums though. Didn’t stop this from reaching #2 Steam Best seller the other day though XD

I’m pretty impressed so far, though it’s a little clunky in parts (no real surprise there). My main gripe at this stage is that combat doesn’t feel especially compelling to me, hopefully there’s some improvement still to go there.

It’s still a hell of a lot of money for the beta of an indy game, nothing like Planetary Annihilation charging $90 for their beta though!

I do see a bit of irony that gamers complain about being beta testers for big development companies releasing buggy or unfinished games, and about same companies charging through the roof for direct download in Australia, but with Kickstarter games it’s almost welcomed.

I’m keen to give this a look because I’ve always loved this setting (and loved the original) but I think I will wait until I can play it in its full glory, for less of a price tag.